Bus Strike Puts Parents on the Spot

Jason Factor, right, pushing his son Felix, 9, who travels from Fort Greene, Brooklyn, to attend a special-needs school in Murray Hill.
Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

By

Lisa Fleisher and

Rachel Cromidas

Updated Jan. 28, 2013 1:56 p.m. ET

On Thursday evening, Raylene Charles gave up. Her 12-year-old son Nashama indicated he wasn't going to school on Friday. Trying to force him would have meant enduring another exhausting, screaming tantrum.

So for the fourth time in the seven school days of a citywide school-bus driver strike, Nashama—who can't walk, doesn't talk and uses a feeding tube in his stomach—would stay home from school, the one place his mother tries to make him feel like any other kid.

"If you let him stay home for too long, he can become comfortable, because home is of course the sweetest place to be," said Ms. Charles, 45 years old, of the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn. "It's a disruption of his education, and it's a disruption of him being normal."

ENLARGE

Deborah Webb Henderson Cook and her son, Jermarl Henderson, 18, who attends a special-needs school in Gramercy Park.
Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

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As the strike enters its third week, parents like Ms. Charles whose children have special needs are continuing to struggle to get them to school. Some are spending money on taxi rides to school, while others are carving out time from busy schedules to drive children to class or spend the day at home with them.

Their regular bus drivers and matrons, many of whom have training for such students and know their passengers' particular needs, are walking the picket lines to try to save job protections in their contracts with private companies. City officials said they are legally unable to include those protections in new contracts as it rebids many of its 7,700 school-bus lines.

School attendance has slightly improved since the start of the strike on Jan. 16, but not by much. On the first day, about 56% of students in New York City's public schools for students with disabilities attended, compared with a normal attendance rate of about 83%. On Friday, that number was up to 65%—better, but still significantly below normal.

Students with severe mental and physical disabilities often can't simply hop on a subway and can't take a car service alone. "He could freak out and have a violent situation," said Eliza Factor, of Brooklyn, whose son Felix, 9, has autism and cerebral palsy. She or her husband drive him.

Kendra Oke, 43, a Parent Teacher Association president at a school where many students have autism, said she spends $40 a day on cabs to shuttle her 7-year-old son to school. The city is reimbursing parents for part of the cost of cab rides, but it still adds up, Ms. Oke said.

Parents have told her they are scared to lose their jobs but take risks for the sake of their children. "They need this consistent support base to succeed, or else they backslide," she said. "If they don't have routines their mental status is going to slide back, and we work really hard to move them forward."

Some children haven't been to school once since the strike began. Deborah Webb Henderson Cook has kept her son at home on the Lower East Side because she has few transportation options and her own health problems. Her 18-year-old son Jermarl Henderson, who has a chromosomal disorder called DiGeorge Syndrome, has had multiple open-heart surgeries and requires intensive, complex therapy, she said.

On a typical day at home, Ms. Cook said she tries to keep up a routine by asking Jermarl to practice tracing the alphabet or draw and paint. A nurse still visits daily, but he isn't receiving his regular occupational, physical and speech therapy at Public School 138 on East 23rd Street. He also can't learn sign language at home.

"Jermarl is very delicate," she said. "He might look like he's not sick. If you lift up his shirt, it looks like they ran a train on my child."

"All this is holding him back," she said. "It's a shame he has to stay home. It's not right."

Things might change this week, when a decision from the National Labor Relations Board is expected. If the board finds in favor of the bus companies, it could ask a federal court to order drivers to return to work. The bus companies are scheduled to meet Monday with the union at Gracie Mansion, though it isn't clear what might come of that meeting.

Principals said their schools for students with special needs haven't felt the same since the strike. Some classrooms are half empty, and students often arrive hours after the morning bell.

Principal Nira Schwartz-Nyitray said students in wheelchairs have had the toughest time getting to P.S. 396 in Brooklyn, where she estimated attendance has been about 50%. Teachers are worried about continuing with planned lessons, because they are concerned they will have to play catch-up when absent students return.

The school sent packets of work home for students before the strike began. The Department of Education has also posted generic lessons online, but they don't help students who can't read words, only pictures, Ms. Schwartz-Nyitray said.

At the Rebecca School, a Manhattan private school for students with autism and other special needs, attendance has been down by 10% to 25% since the strike began. Some students come in an hour or two late, while others—particularly those from Staten Island—don't arrive at all, said Tina McCourt. the school's director.

Typically, school buses would unload students by 8:30 a.m., and the day would begin with greetings from teachers and scheduled therapy sessions. Now, school therapists must rearrange their schedules to accommodate late arrivals, and teachers must forgo some group lessons planned for the mornings.

"The parents are overwhelmed. They're worried about missing work so they leave the kids at home, or they're waiting at freezing cold bus stops or subway platform," Ms. McCourt said. "It's kind of a whirlwind for them as well."

The strike is costing many parents hundreds of dollars a week that won't be reimbursed. While the city has provided MetroCards and will reimburse parents for the miles they drive their children to school, it doesn't pay for the return taxi trip.

The city won't pay for extra babysitting hours for the longer journeys or for days when parents decide it is easier to keep children like Nashama home.

"I always have to pick my battles," said Ms. Charles, who is a school secretary and whose husband is a history teacher at a public high school.

Corrections & Amplifications Jermarl Henderson attends a special-needs school in Gramercy Park. The photo caption with an earlier version of this article incorrectly said the school was in Chelsea.

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